\n<\/p>\n
A lawyer who filed Hamas\u2019s challenge to proscription in the UK was recorded by police as being a member of the banned group, \u201cequating him with his client\u201d.<\/p>\n
On a risk assessment form, a detective inspector, who authorised the detention of Fahad Ansari under the Terrorism Act on his return from a family holiday in Ireland, wrote \u201cHamas\u201d in the space reserved for \u201cmembership of a known group\u201d.<\/p>\n
Ansari is challenging the stop at the port of Holyhead on 6 August last year, claiming his detention and the processing of data from his phone containing legally privileged lawyer-client communications were unlawful. The form was released as part of the legal process.<\/p>\n
Before Wednesday\u2019s judicial review of the stop, Ansari said: \u201cAs a solicitor from Ireland, seeing this in black and white was chilling: it echoes a dark period when the British state targeted lawyers for representing members of another proscribed group [the IRA].<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is not Belfast in the 1980s when such messages were delivered with bullets, but the intention is the same: represent Hamas and face consequences. By trying to intimidate lawyers like me, the British state is effectively seeking to strip my clients of their voice in court.\u201d<\/p>\n
In written submissions for this week\u2019s trial, Hugh Southey KC, representing Ansari, said: \u201cThe claimant is not a member of Hamas. His only association with the organisation is his instruction as their solicitor in the de-proscription proceedings lodged in April 2025.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a witness statement the detective inspector who completed the risk assessment form wrote that its contents were \u201cnot accurate\u201d, adding: \u201cWhat I had intended to write was that Mr Ansari worked as a solicitor for Hamas, and not that he was a member of this group.\u201d He claimed that it \u201cdid not affect any of the decisions that any other officers took in relation to Mr Ansari\u201d.<\/p>\n
Southey said that the witness statement, in which the detective inspector said \u201ceveryone clearly understood the position that Mr Ansari was the solicitor for Hamas\u201d suggested that \u201cat least, representation of Hamas was equated with membership. DI [police number] 2556 was essentially equating the claimant with his client\u201d.<\/p>\n
The barrister said that the first defendant in the case, the chief constable of North Wales police (the other defendant being the home secretary), had given \u201cconfused, contradictory and less than candid\u201d explanations of whether the stop was random or targeted.<\/p>\n
Southey said: \u201cBetween 8 and 12 August 2025, the claimant\u2019s work mobile phone was downloaded and copied. The contents have been examined.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was a directed and targeted stop against a practising solicitor acting for persons of interest to law enforcement and the intelligence and security services.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added that Ansari suspected that \u201ca key purpose, if not the primary purpose, of the stop was to obtain access to his phone\u201d.<\/p>\n
The submissions say Ansari had also been stopped in June 2024 in an apparent random detention, which is permitted under schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act, but \u2013 unlike the stop last year when he was returning from visiting his mother \u2013 was not asked questions about Palestine or Hamas.<\/p>\n
Southsea said: \u201cThe significant difference in the intervening period of time was the application on behalf of Hamas on 9 April 2025.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added that when the de-proscription claim was filed, complaints were made to counter-terrorism police about Ansari, who was also the subject of a complaint by the then shadow secretary of state, Robert Jenrick, to the Solicitors Regulation Authority.<\/p>\n
Both North Wales police and the Home Office declined to comment on the case while it is active.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A lawyer who filed Hamas\u2019s challenge to proscription in the UK was recorded by police as being a member of the banned group, \u201cequating him with his client\u201d. On a risk assessment form, a detective inspector, who authorised the detention of Fahad Ansari under the Terrorism Act on his return from a family holiday in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":49112,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[160,23579,1936,11064,175,6539,2137,2855,1551,24432],"class_list":{"0":"post-49111","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-crime-justice","8":"tag-court","9":"tag-falsely","10":"tag-group","11":"tag-hamas","12":"tag-law","13":"tag-lawyer","14":"tag-listed","15":"tag-member","16":"tag-police","17":"tag-represented"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49111\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/49112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}